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Dessert

Lemon Pudding

A baked lemon pudding made with sponge cake, dried cherries, and a brandy lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a plain mold with butter.

  2. Place a few dried cherries and strips of green citron in the bottom.

  3. Add broken spongecake pieces to fill the mold.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. In a bowl, whisk together 6 eggs, 5 ounces of powdered sugar, the grated rind of 2 lemons, and 1 pint of milk.

  2. Pour the mixture gently into the mold.

  3. Cover the mold with a piece of buttered paper.

  4. Place the mold in a stewpan and add enough water to reach halfway up the mold.

  5. Gently boil for 1 hour, adding water as needed to replace evaporation.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In another stewpan, combine 6 ounces of white sugar, the grated rind of 1 lemon, and a little water; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in ½ glass of brandy to finish the sauce.

  3. To serve, run a thin knife around the mold and gently turn the pudding onto a dish.

  4. Pour the sauce over the pudding and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard that binds the pudding and gives it a tender, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness as it sets.
Spongecakes
Soak up the custard, so the pudding holds together while becoming moist and tender.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the egg and milk mixture.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and thickens it slightly as it boils down into a syrup.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oil that flavours both the custard and the sauce.

The step that matters

Gently boil for 1 hour, adding water as needed. Eggs set into a delicate custard at a gentle simmer. Vigorous boiling or a dry pan can make the pudding rough, porous, or scorched, so the water level must be kept steady.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, milk, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, milk, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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